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CUSA West Division Tie Breaking Scenarios

Officially, the league’s only tie breaker is head-to-head and “other tie breaking scenarios will be released at a later date”. We do have previously released scenarios that will likely be format this season. From CUSA’s wiki page

Two-team tie-breaker procedure

  1. Highest regular season winning percentage based on overall Conference USA play.
  2. If tied, head to head between tied teams.
  3. If still tied, team with highest CFP ranking.

Three or more-team procedure

(Once the tie has been reduced to two teams, go to the two-team tie-breaker format.)

  1. Highest regular season winning percentage based on overall CUSA play.
  2. If tied, head to head between tied teams.
  3. If still tied, highest winning percentage within division.
  4. If still tied, compare records against divisional opponents in descending order of finish.
  5. If still tied, compare records with common cross-divisional opponents.
  6. If still tied, compare records against cross-divisional opponents in descending order of finish.
  7. If still tied, team with highest CFP ranking.
  8. If still tied, the representative will be the team that has not participated in the championship game most recently.
  9. If at any point the tie is broken in a multiple team tie, the remaining teams will begin the process again at #2.

For North Texas the easiest and least confusing scenario is to win out. Beating La Tech would put North Texas at 5-1 in conference with two of the division (and league’s) weakest teams remaining. USM, UAB, and UTSA would need NT to lose both games to Rice and UTEP to take control. NT really needs two wins out of three to sew up the division and if one of those is La Tech then there won’t be as much drama. Standings as of today:

West Team Div
North Texas 4-1
Southern Miss 3-2
UAB 3-2
UTSA 2-2
Louisiana Tech 2-2
Rice 1-3
UTEP 0-4

Assuming an NT Loss vs LT and everyone wins out from then on (UTSA excluded since they are on LT’s and UAB’s schedule), this is what the situation would be:

NT conf 6-2 , div 5-1
LT conf 6-2 , div 4-2
UAB conf 6-2 , div 4-2

NT would go to the CUSA title game based on the third tiebreaker — highest winning percentage within division.

The issue is that if NT were to lose, they would need to root for a set of outcomes: 1) Win out 2) LT losing to one of FAU, UTEP, UTSA. 3) (only if LT wins out) UAB wins out.

Of course, the league can possibly interpret things differently but based on what we have available this should be the scenario. Again, this is all easier if North Texas wins this Saturday.

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